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Thursday, January 17, 2013

14 Game Tournament Starts This Weekend

(image, Cornell Athletics)

Get all the information you need about the Cornell Big Red's season series against Columbia: vs Columbia in Ithaca, NY, Saturday, January 19, 2013, 3 pm (NBC Sports Network) and at Columbia, Saturday, January 26, 2013, 7 pm, with The Cornell Basketball Blog's Game Preview Center.

9 comments:

I've been hard on BigRed during the non conference games but now it's time to circle the wagons and let's get to work and take care of business .

BigRed has the talent to take Columbia if they can.keep Mullins from getting a clean look from three and front Hummer on the offense and go straight at him on the other end and get him in foul trouble. If we do those two things well be fine. Make them work on defense.

Start season 2-0 and we well on ate way because we will split with Princeton and Harvard. Have I drank to much of the Kool-aid????

Must say that offense I saw at OW can take any Ivy team if we reduced them three attempts and make slow Columbia play defense. They play 4 guys about 30 plus mins time to make them run when we can early and often!!!

they will do what they did last year: beat Princeton & get people's hopes up, then lose to Yale by 30 ... they are not consistent ... like delaney said in that interview, they switch up personnel and response all the time so that you have no idea what they're gonna do ... no plan = wild results

As someone who was at Newman for the final tune-up before League play, I thought I'd weigh in...

I've been thinking about the team's performance that afternoon versus Old Westbury, and came away with the following: It resembled more of a pickup game than a Division I (or even Division III) contest. That's not necessarily a critique; my point is it was fast-paced and haphazard.

I've come to see that this is in fact Courtney's preferred style of play, which caters to the athletic recruits that now populate his roster. What gets the team in trouble is when they push the tempo beyond even their own capabilities.

To use a jazz analogy (and I apologize if this sounds pretentious), Courtney's preaching Ornette Coleman-esque free exploration, but the kids seem more comfortable with a John Coltrane style of improvisation. In other words, they've got to have some structure (meaning a set offense) to play over. Otherwise, it's chaos.

I saw a lot of that last Saturday. Someone grabbed a rebound, Courtney yelled, "Push!" and everyone flew the length of the floor. Sometimes it ended with an easy bucket, sometimes with an ill-advised three-pointer, and sometimes with a turnover.

The team clearly needs more of the former; during the Old Westbury game, there were a number of poor shots and errant passes resulting from forced penetration.

This is a team still in the midst of forging an identity, and with less than forty-eight hours before Columbia rolls into town, that could prove to be their undoing.

That being said, I will be in the stands again this Saturday cheering them on (sans bounce house, of course).

At the risk of over-simplifying the 14-game season, I would go so far as to say a split with Princeton and Harvard would make the season a success in my eyes. Obviously, there are ten other games and 2-12 would be a disappointment but I, for one, am not expecting to break even against the two presumptive favorites. Given how far ahead of the rest of the six teams I consider Princeton and Harvard, even one victory would be promising.

Last year, we caught Princeton at Newman on their first game of conference play; it was literally their worst Ivy game of the season and the Tigers improved steadily until the end of February when they might have been the best team in the League. Harvard was better at the start of Ivy play, but was more inconsistent from week to week. We played them tough at home too, but ultimately the talent discrepancy was too great.

Can we beat them this year? It would take our playing one of our best games on the same night one of them played a well below average game. It's possible, but I can't view it as an expectation.

During the OW game Cherry started at point and got 14 points and 5 assists in 20 minutes during that very uptempo game. This game should be played at a less frenetic pace. So less turnovers should be expected. Would really like to see him get another start at point believe he would have size and speed over Barbour and make him expend energy trying to D up on Cherry.